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Discusses the transition between multinational and global business orientation and the implications for the industrial corporation′s marketing information systems. Presents a framework for analyzing a corporation′s pretransition status and designing strategies for the transition. Concludes that effective globally oriented marketing information systems represent various opportunities for creating or enhancing competitive advantage.

Purpose: The present chapter includes discussing the effects of COVID-19 in the tourism industry. Although much has been written on COVID-19 in these days, literature emphasizes on the economic devastating consequences of lockdown on tourism industry. The chapter goes in an opposite direction revealing the fears, expectance, and hopes of tourism staff in Argentina.

Design-Methodology: Because of the methodological impossibilities to conduct face-to-face interviews, we have employed digital platform to conduct 50 interviews in tourism professionals geographically located in different Argentinean cities as well as coming from different subsectors in the tourism industry. The used method was snowball which means that each interviewee recommended another one once the interview ends. The sample was drawn in 20 females and 30 males from 25 to 55 years old.

Findings: The findings suggest three important assumptions. Interviewees expressed some partisan or ideological hostilities against China and Eastern countries. The Chinese tourists were seen with some mistrust for interviewed people as well as the reaction of Chinese government to stop the pandemic. In other cases, old inter-class rivalries were found when interviewees blamed the stranded (rich) tourists as the main carriers of the virus in Argentina-wide. Hostilities and chauvinist expression against neighboring countries such Bolivia or Chile were overtly uttered. These narratives escalate when interviewees manifest their wages have been unilaterally slumped down. By the side, digital technologies offer as fertile ground to exploit new forms of tourism in the years to come.

Research Limitations: The obtained outcome should be validated in next approaches because the sample is not statistically representative of the universe. The restrictions imposed by the lockdown impeded further research today. In the same line, the sample was limited to tourism professionals, which suggests that policymakers should be included in the future research.

Practical Implications: Understanding the fears and hope of tourism staff is an alternative way to enact sustainable policies to mitigate the negative effects of the pandemic in the tourism industry. While these policies construct a bridge between theory and management, no less true is that the future of tourism remains uncertain.

Originality Value: The present chapter provides an original empirical insight into the viewpoint of tourism staff, which is today subject to countless fears and deprivations. The extensive lockdown imposed by Argentinean government, accompanied by the impossibility to orchestrate a preparedness program of mitigation, has led the industry to a slow agony. The chapter reflects the rise of an anti-foreign discourse and sentiment oriented to demonize not only the Chinese (Asian) tourists but also expatriates living abroad. This anti-tourist discourse, which oppose to the neologism offered by Urry as the “tourist-gaze,” univocally exhibits the start of a radicalized hospitality we dubbed as “the wicked-gaze.” The “Other” is not an object of curiosity any longer, but “a potential enemy” to be controlled.

The world has an ageing population who want to stay at home, many of whom are unable to care for themselves without help. As the number of available carers is becoming saturated by demand, research is being carried out into how technology could assist elderly people in the home. A barrier preventing wide adoption is that this audience can find controlling assistive technology difficult, as they may be less dexterous and computer literate. This paper explores the use of gestures to control home automation, hoping to provide a more natural and intuitive interface to help bridge the gap between technology and older users. A prototype was created, and then trialled with a small panel of older users. Using the Nintendo Wii Remote (Wiimote) technology, gestures performed in the air were captured using an infrared camera. Computational intelligence techniques were then used to recognise and learn the gestures. This resulted in sending the command to standard home automation X10 units to control a number of attached electrical devices. It was found that although older people could readily use gestures to control devices, configuration of a home system might remain a task for carers or technicians.

Some authors have alerted on the state of crisis generated by Covid-19 in the tourism industry worldwide. The restrictive measures disposed by governments generated not only an unparalleled economic crisis but also serious social maladies in society and education (i.e., higher dropout rates and low academic grades). Needless to say that the tourism education was in crisis much time earlier than the Covid-19 pandemic. Echoing Sigala and Ratten, the authors hold the pungent thesis that Covid-19 introduced a new opportunity to reform the epistemology and the basis of the tourism education curricula. Centerd on the role played by pleasure and joy, which is boosted by the digital technologies, this chapter synthesizes the findings of PANCOE, a successful experiment conducted by the University of Palermo, Argentina, to reduce the dropout rates while improving students’ academic performance. The experiment was drawn and applied in the years before and after the pandemic. Results show how pleasure plays a vital role giving students better opportunities in contexts of fear and deprivation.

The Covid-19 pandemic has thwarted global mobility over an unimaginable scale, forcing the competitive market processes of the tourism sector to be seriously disrupted. The ongoing pandemic has closed borders, suspended flights, quarantined more than half of the world population, induced mass fear and shook globalisation. The phenomenon of overtourism is related to the high number of tourists, the nature and time span of their visits and the carrying capability of the destination. To understand the nature of overtourism and the implications, it is essential to recognise why people of particular cities have begun to see tourism as a factor that has an adverse impact on their quality of life. This chapter aims to provide a link between Covid-19 and overtourism and also to examine whether both of these can offer opportunities or challenges to tourist destinations in the future. Based on the analysis of numerous existing crisis recovery mechanisms, the tourism industry is expected to rebound from this abrupt market shock, mostly due to various forms of government interventions. The present startling moment of the Covid-19 pandemic provides an opportunity to find hope in the ruins through the deconstruction of framings of crisis as ‘error’ and through reflecting on the present and future role of tourism in contributing to a more socially and environmentally sustainable community.

The leisure industry is colossally impacted by varied types of crisis. Assessing the volatility; an attempt is made towards disaster planning and a response system. This chapter indicates an all-inclusive integrated approach to deal with disasters and narrates conceptual and latest factual findings in the space of disaster management. An efficient and self-equipped attraction demands a competent and efficient disaster management system in place.

This chapter devises measures to deal with the capacity of a destination during pandemic and proposes recovering strategies for the leisure business. Destination governance and disaster management techniques are well explored in the proposed chapter.

An imperative study of this nature will determine the role of cultural perceptions of varied risk and threats in a pandemic scenario. Innovative practices of disaster governance and Post-disaster recovery strategies are crucial mechanisms for the sustenance of tourism and hospitality sector.

The conceptual ideas and outcomes obtained in this chapter helps policy makers not only to find new strategies to placate the negative impacts of COVID-19 on the organic image of tourist destinations but also assists in accelerating the recovery timeframe just after the pandemic.

The literary world is an elitist enclave, where anti‐marketing rhetoric is regularly encountered. This paper aims to show that the book trade has always been hard‐nosed and commercially driven.

This paper is less a review of the literature, or a theoretical treatise, than a selective revelation of the commercial realities of the book business.

The paper shows that the cultural industries in general and the book business in particular were crucibles of marketing practice long before learned scholars started taking notice. It highlights the importance of luck, perseverance and, not least, marketing nous in the “manufacture” of international bestsellers.

By highlighting humankind's deep‐seated love of narrative – its clear preference for fiction over fact – this paper suggests that marketing scholars should reconsider their preferred mode of research representation. Hard facts are all very well, but they are less palatable than good stories, well told.

The paper makes no claim to originality. It recovers what we already know but appear to have forgotten in our non‐stop pursuit of scientific respectability.

This study aims to shed light on how internships' features drive employability outcomes and answers the question of how internships that maximize the employability of interns can be designed. The study assumes that the duration of an internship, degree of formalization and the use of internship-specific motivational practices by companies are likely to influence interns' perceptions of employability.

A study among interns investigated the relationship between different internship features and interns' employability. Data on the duration of the internship, motivational practices specific to internships and the formalization of the internship process were collected from a large sample of 13,565 interns in 27 European countries from 15 to 35 years old.

The findings suggest that internship duration has a curvilinear effect on employability with increasing effects on employability at the beginning of the internship, followed by a decrease over time. In addition, the use of practices specifically designed to motivate interns also favors the interns' employability. Finally, formalization of the internship placement moderates the effect of motivational practices on employability.

By identifying key features of the internship experience – duration, formalization and motivational practices – the authors contribute to the theory related to the development of career resources and employability in young adults and show that these features significantly shape young adults' employability perceptions.

From 2006 onwards very large Belgian nonprofit organizations (NPOs) are legally required to appoint an external auditor. In this context we investigate whether auditor choice in favor of a sector expert, being a higher quality auditor, is associated with NPOs’ expectations regarding several auditor attributes. We find that NPOs are more likely to choose a sector expert if they attach higher importance to an auditor’s client focus and relationship with management. NPOs are less likely to choose a sector expert if they care more about the practical execution of the audit. We provide recommendations for increasing the appeal of sector expertise as valuable auditor attribute. The resulting quality increase of NPOs’ financial statements and audit reports could benefit various stakeholders.